LOUISIADE ARCHIPELAGO is S.E. of New Guinea. It extends about 400 miles in length, by about 160 miles in breadth, where broadest. The centre of the Archipelago is under lat. S., and long. 152° 25 E. The islands are inhabited by a black Papuan race with woolly hair, and Macgillivray described the natives as dark copper coloured, the hair nearly all frizzled out into a mop, in some instances of prodigious size. The physiognomy varied much ; the nose was narrower and more prominent, the mouth smaller, the lips thinner, the eyes more distant, the eyebrows less overhanging, the forehead higher, but not. broader than in the Australian ; one man, whose head was shaven, had his fore head narrow and receding, appearing as if arti ficially flattened, thereby giving great prominence and width to the hinder part of the skull ; and he often observed the same configuration of head combined with dark-coloured skin and diminutive stature. None had the artificial prominent scars
on the body peculiar to the Australians, or wanted any of the front teeth, but the septum of the nose was perforated to admit an ornament of polished shell, pointed and slightly turned up at each end. The lobe of the ear was slit, the hole being either kept distended by a large plug of rolled-up leaf, apparently of the banana, or hung with thin circular ear-rings made of the ground down end of a cone-shell (Conus millepuuctatus) one and a half inches in diameter, with a central hole and a slit leading to the edge. A piece of cloth-like substance, the dried leaf of the pan danus or some palm, was used by all, passed between the legs, and secured in front and behind to a narrow waistband. Several of the Mega podius duperreyi were seen by Mr. Macgillivray in the Louisiade Archipelago.—Maegillivray's royage, i. P. 189.